


5 Deals Michael Made and 1 Choice

by queenmab24601



Series: Book of Adam [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5 Times, Gen, Mild Gore, Nonbinary Character, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-10 08:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2017752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmab24601/pseuds/queenmab24601
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basically what it says on the tin. Pre my "Book of Adam" verse. Michael makes a lot of deals even though they wouldn't necessarily call them that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Michael in this verse is non binary. They prefer whichever pronouns their vessels like, though use they/them outside of vessels. This concept will be explored more later in the series, though right now I'm just stating to explain pronoun shifts and such in this.  
> Also, small warning that I typed this chapter on my phone, so there may be some awkward formatting.  
> Enjoy!

1\. In the beginning  
Michael knew an Adam before Adam Milligan. Technically, they knew several, theoretically speaking, following down the lines of descent as they wound down to the Winchester specific branch.

But Michael had actually spoken to the first Adam before they'd ever even taken a vessel. Like Adam Milligan, the first human could speak to angels. See them in all their glory had God had made them when the universe began, split off fragments of heat and ice and dust and air in the creation of stars.

The original Adam was, like his descendent, tremendously unlucky. His first wife was the first demon, wandering off one day from Eden and never seen until she had to be fought off when Cain was born.

And Eve , though no prophet ever caught wind of it, was mother to more than just the first humans. After Abel's death, and Cain's running away with a mark and jawbone in hand, she was never quite the same. Even Seth's birth didn't quite cheer her up. Understandable...in a way.

So she made children without Adam, all on her own, who hated their predecessors. It pained Michael's grace. Reminded them of their brother's swift downfall after Adam first breathed. How wonderful Adam had been, when their father had touched him. How full of innocence sand wonder and embued with the very sense of earth itself .

But all things must come to an end

"Adam." Michael had said, brushing the man's cheek with a tendril of light.

"Have you come to torment me again?" He had railed. "Like you tore us from the garden?"

"I come to pay my condolences. For the loss of your children and wife."

"And you did nothing to stop it!"

"My father did not tell me to. All is destined according to his will."

"You have beset me with curses and pain in the form of these bitches!

Michael had withdrawn, curling away from Adam and folding their wings behind them. "You have troubles with female dogs?"

"No, all these women! All my problems have come from women."

A shudder ran through Michael, piercing through light and sound before their grace could pull itself back together. They arranged themselves into a higher register before speaking again. "The fall changed you more than I thought. I see in you the darkness that colored the light bringer's thoughts."

Adam only hissed, a primal sound

"Perhaps I should ask father if he means to begin again. That seems to be the only path forward. Maybe this was a lesson for the angels.

"No, no, no!" Adam moaned. "I will worship you. Exalt God into glory. Only let me live."

" I cannot decide for God." Michael drew their wings out to move back to heaven and their post.

"Wait."

Michael did

"Experience the world my way and you shall see." Adam held out a hand to Michael's grace. Michael wrapped themself around the hand, and read into Adam's thoughts

Michael took his first steps onto the earth, saw muted colors, tasted the minerals in the air, and still couldn't see.


	2. Your Blood He Deemed it was that Stained His Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael looks for Gabriel among the Greek Pantheon. But they get caught up in the ancestor of their true vessel.  
> Even among the pagans, God's plan must be followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is taken from Sophocles's "Ajax".

Michael enjoys being Athena. She can't help it. 

Gabriel ran soon after their father left. Michael told Raphael to structure heaven while they chased Gabriel down. Of course, they recommend a few angels sorted to the task. Naomi loved God almost as much as the archangels. Anael cares for the humans. And Castiel is imaginative, creative even. Those are dangerous traits, but the young angel will be tempered by their brethren. 

And then they follow after their second lost brother. 

The Greeks are an easy place to start. They constantly gain and lose members to their pantheon, coming up with countless theories as to why the so called deities belonged to them all along.   
This helps Michael greatly. 

Only among humans do the angels have true vessels. But the strange species that call themselves gods hold their weight without ripping apart too. 

Zeus, leader of the Greeks, swallowed his first wife. Michael is not sure how this worked, but it is true all the same. In his head rests this first wife, Metis, who provides the Greeks with all the knowledge they need. Michael thinks they could use a lot more. 

Michael slips into Zeus's head while he lies sleeping crooning an Enochian hymn into his brain.

Metis's child died. The brain is hardly a suitable living environment for anyone, let alone a child. 

"I want to be remembered," Metis says. "I want my child to earn her glory."

"I can only make it so that her name lives," Michael offers. 

"Yes," Metis says. 

Metis stays within Zeus's head but her acquiescence is strong enough to make Michael learn what it is to be female. 

 

Being among the Greeks is exhilarating. They are far less formal there than in heaven. Artemis calls Michael sister with a softness angels do not possess. She grows to love them in turn, call them family. 

Gets involved in their wars. 

In this way, she meets Odysseus. He can  _see_ her. Doesn't burn up on seeing her true face. He is among the chosen of Adam's line. He and his kin have to live.

She intercedes more than the Greeks are used to with Odysseus. Whispers cunning plans in his ear, appears before him and speaks freely. He reminds her of home in a fierce way she didn't know she missed.

 

Here is the truth. If the Greek Pantheon had had it their way, their people would have lost at Troy.

Apollo whispers prophecy into the ears of a daughter of Priam's house. Cassandra sees Odysseus's plan, a grand wooden horse, and imagines fire in its belly and smoke pouring from its mouth. 

Michael likes Cassandra. She's a true prophet, and at least half of what she says is what her father willed. But she still came to Andromache in a dream the night before and urged her to not believe anything her sister-in-law says, if she ever did. To urge her father-in-law to trust her, on behalf of Hector. And because Priam misses his favorite son, he favors her. Michael knows a lot about family dynamics.

What she cannot figure out how to fix is Laocoon, the Greek Pantheon's back up plan. He is a trusted priest to the Trojans, and, unfortunately, a good man. Michael cannot make it so that anyone would doubt his word. He will speak, and his sons will cheer him on, and the Trojans will tear the horse and Odysseus down, spilling the blood of Adam to the ground. 

 

After Eve birthed the leviathans and they razed down all in their path, Michael and Raphael and Gabriel took the woman and her fierce children and buried them under the sea floor. Inside this small bubble, they multiplied. Michael was not comfortable with this, but their father had not ordered their destruction.

She thinks this might be why.

"Eve."

The human (is she, still?) cocks her head and views Michael apathetically. "Hmm. You are much smaller than I remember."

"I need your help."

"The last time you asked for my aid one of my children died, the other left me, and my husband invented an entirely new bunch of names to call me." The writing mass of twisting tentacles and teeth at Eve's feet snap at Michael's vessel. 

"I will free you from this. You  _and_ your children."

This is a call Eve cannot resist. She loves her babies too much. "Hmm. Interesting."

"I have a task for them. To aid what is remaining in your human line. One target. No more, no less. Than I will give you all your own space on earth to slither over as much as you'd like."

"My children are up to the task." Eve strokes under one of the leviathan's chins. It neither purrs nor hisses but etches out a screech, it's gaping mouth reminding Michael of the walls she put up around hell. 

Michael almost cannot say the words. She has seen the Greeks do worse. Frequently. But she is an angel...And so she follows the will of God. To protect the line of her true vessels. "Laocoon. You will find him at the beach of Troy." 

"I accept your deal. Do not cross me again, Michael."

 

Michael is there on Troy's beach that day. When the leviathans rise from the sea, they are a glory to behold, it is true. They are black and sinuous. But they are not slow. They lunge, and Laoocoon is gone in a flash of inky skin. 

"No." Apollo says next to her.

"It is for the best, brother." He turns to her, enraged. 

That is when Michael hears the beasts move again. They turn on Laocoon's sons, ripping young flesh apart. 

Hermes throws up. "How  _could_ you?" He asks. "You betray me, sister." 

Michael is confused. The tide has turned on her twice. Gabriel has been here all along.

But she has other matters to attend to.

Things happen in quick succession after that. Invisible to the eyes of mortals, Michael, in her grey-eyed vessel, turns Eve's serpent children back to sea. 

Coming back to the first woman, she keeps her part of the bargain. She splits off a piece of an unknown continent and puts up a new dimension around it. "Enjoy your stay."

"You throw me from the garden again!"

Michael shrugs. "You deserve it."

She arrives to see Troy in ruins. She feels almost even more hollow in this victory than in defeating Lucifer. Almost.

 

"Zeus says you were right all along," Hermes/Gabriel tells her from where she views the destruction. "That this will bring us greater glory."

Michael remains silent.

"It's almost funny, actually." Gabriel says. "You know, I was thinking about turning it around, too. I like it here a lot. I'd hate to forsake Greece for Troy. The rice itself tastes a lot better in Hellas."

Michael sits down, relishes the feel of a vessel against the earth. She turns the ash over in one hand.

"So you heard about Cassandra then."

"Ajax will pay," Michael says neutrally. "I have a plan for that."

"Hmm. And all this to protect Odysseus, am I right?" 

"And his son. I know their future. How it all turns out. Odysseus will take a roundabout route home. On his way, he will meet Telemachus's future wife, Nausicaa. If none of this comes into play, Dean Winchester will not be born." 

"Well that's a pretty convoluted plan, Mikey." 

She snorts. "It's Athena here,  _Hermes_." 

"You think you're so much better than the rest of us, don't you. Condescending to me and Raphael. Even here, where they accept you with open arms and whatever bullshit you make up about the aegis. You talk down - treat them like pets."

Michael hums noncommittally.

"Well, I happen to think they're worth a thousand angels."

It is only after Gabriel leaves to console Apollo that Michael concedes he may be right. 

 


	3. Things From the First Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the Greek Pantheon falls, Michael is there to welcome in their Roman conquerors with open arms. Along the way, they lose another brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's taken me forever to update this. It's part real life obligations, part lack of inspiration, but hopefully I can get back to this verse and do more work in it soon!

The decline of the Greek pantheon is slow, but it is all part of The Plan. The angels cannot allow one single pagan pantheon to grow too strong, and Michael is in peak position to bring it down.

The Romans jump at the offer to take down their former conquerors. The Greeks would have faded eventually, growing too weak too truly last forever, but pushing the path along now lets Michael make a side deal for the angels. 

She lands in what will eventually be called Assisi and can already feel the power coursing through the hillside and flowers, the future prophets that will come from this land. Where she alights the Roman gods promise they will dedicate to her. Mercury is particularly appeasing, a people pleaser, and Michael's lip curls. If this creature is cut from the same mold as Gabriel's former vessel, she is glad to have Gabriel as Hermes rather than seeing that vessel in charge.

Michael locks eyes with the two goddesses needed to fill her position as Athena. Minerva and Bellona. The Romans can sense something is off, that the pantheons do not match up exactly and that there is a reason beyond their origins for it, but Michael does not give them time to dwell. 

"Let Minerva have the temple," Michael says, faintly smiling. In a few hundred years the temple will become a church, Maria Supra Minerva, and Michael will have triumphed again. The Romans do not know that yet.

In the same blow she is already spreading dissension among the Romans, sewing their future destruction. 

 

When the Romans invade Olympus, it is to an open gate. 

"Daughter," Zeus calls desperate, as Artemis and Apollo pull their father away in hiding.

Michael stands there, dispassionate. "You were never my father," she says, and turns away.

Ares is slaughtered by Mars where he stands. Michael sees the first hint of a Demeter who will become bloodthirsty as Hestia's throat is cut by Vesta. Michael has never seen two enlightened beings tearing at each others' flesh with their teeth personally, and it is startling enough that she pushes Vesta away and says "enough. You have won."

"Thank you Athena, for our victory," Jupiter says.

"Thank you, indeed," Mercury adds.

"Oh, yes, thank you,  _Athena_ ," comes a new voice as Gabriel emerges from behind a pillar and faces his sister. "You're just as bad as he was."

Michael is shocked and in that brief pause Gabriel winks and disappears. 

"Who was that?" Mercury asks.

"None of your concern," Michael answers. "Enjoy your prize." She drops Athena's vessel, leaving the body slumped magnificently over the throne of Olympus. She did promise Metis her daughter's glory. after all. 

They fly away on the trial of Gabriel's grace, still recent enough to follow it to lands of ice and snow, and Gabriel banging on the gates of Valhalla.

 

"What are you doing?" Michael asks, hovering around Gabriel still in his old vessel, twirling their grace around them.

"You want everything to go according to plan, Michael?" Gabriel asks. "You want your world order, following the orders to a father we haven't seen personally for thousands of years? Fine. Just leave me alone."

"You still have a part to play, Gabriel," Michael insists, caressing Gabriel's cheek, instilling warmth in a vessel slowly freezing over.

"I'll do what I have to for 'The Plan', Mikey," Gabriel says, turning to face Michael. His vessel is changing,  shapeshifting that uses up more than a fair amount of grace and means that Gabriel will be unrecognizable except in the most dire circumstances. Michael can no longer sense anything that marks Gabriel as an angel. "But you have to promise to leave me alone. Do we have a deal, brother?"

The gates to the Norse pantheon swing open, and Gabriel enters as something totally different. No longer Gabriel, no longer Hermes, but the trickster who will be known as Loki. 

It is only after the gates have swung shut behind him and Michael has stayed there, waiting as a bunch of swirling lights in the cold for a month or more, that they whisper, "Yes." 

 


End file.
